163 réponses à ce sujet

[BatmanPWNS]

Uh theres a reason ME2 won Game of the year and ME1 didn't. It's because ME1 action wasn't as staisfying as the story or the RPG element presented in it.

[celuloid]

Shepard the Leper wrote...

    

celuloid wrote...
        OK, by this definition RPG game is any game where player assumes a role, which is basically every shooter out there.
    

    And what definition makes a game a RPG? An inventory? Conversations? The option to do mission A first or last? Gaining XP? Distributing skill points? LI? Exploration? What?

Roleplaying makes RPG game. And what makes roleplaying? It is not assuming someone else's role. In that case any game with a story would be RPG, because every game has protagonist and he has a role in its story.
Roleplaying is when you apply your own personality to respond to ingame situations and alter the course of action, at least in small ways. Otherwise it is just spectating like in all those other shooters. We can call them SGs (spectating games).

    RPG is just a name, nothing more or nothing less.

Everything is called for a reason. We don't fling the term back and forth just because it sounds fancy.

Lumikki wrote...
    

celuloid wrote...
        OK, by this definition RPG game is any game where player assumes a role, which is basically every shooter out there.
    

    You did not say RPG, you sayed Role-playing.

    They are not same thing. Role-playing in one main aspect of RPG's, but it's not ONLY aspect. Role-playing is about taking role, like player is acting of role or role-playing through character, like been in character role.. RPG is game design for role-playing, but because it's game, it has sertain features to support role-playing. So, you can role-play in many games, that doesn't mean they become RPG's, because of it. Where the line is drawn, is not clear, because so many people have different idea what RPG is.

When we get definition of role-playing right, we can create definition of RPG game with little effort.
And it just did not go well with bad definition. We created very general type of game.

I agree that RPGs generally have certain things (skill system, inventory) to support the notion that player is a real person who functions normally in game world. But gameplay should not be the distinguishing feature, I would call such games looters/dungeon crawlers, whatever is the prevalent gameplay mechanic. RPG is a game that has role-playing in its story. ME1 had more of it than ME2.

Modifié par celuloid, 26 juillet 2011 - 05:57 .

[Canned Bullets]

I'm not against action, I just don't want Mass Effect 3 to be a linear space shooter.

[Nozybidaj]

KainrycKarr wrote...

ME2 had amazing writing and characters, but the background plot was...lackluster, to me.

Give me ME2's writing and character depth, with ME1's epic story-arch, now that would be an amazing game overall.

Meh, gimme DA:O character depth and banter, ME1 style epic story, and ME2's gameplay and then we're good.

[AlanC9]

celuloid wrote...
Roleplaying makes RPG game. And what makes roleplaying? It is not assuming someone else's role. In that case any game with a story would be RPG, because every game has protagonist and he has a role in its story.
Roleplaying is when you apply your own personality to respond to ingame situations and alter the course of action, at least in small ways. Otherwise it is just spectating like in all those other shooters. We can call them SGs (spectating games).

OK, but note that this.....

    RPG is just a name, nothing more or nothing less.

Everything is called for a reason. We don't fling the term back and forth just because it sounds fancy.

...doesn't mean what you think it does. The RPG genre is something of an accident -- when RPGs were first created you couldn't really do personality, branching decisions, and so forth, but you could do combat and statistical progression. Maybe such games shoudln't be called RPGs. But they were and are.

My point is that the reason that RPGs are called RPGs has nothing to do with how you would like to use the term. I like your definition better, but your definition hasn't won yet.

 RPG is a game that has role-playing in its story. ME1 had more of it than ME2.

How so?

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 juillet 2011 - 06:14 .

[Slayer299]

Shepard the Leper wrote...

Slayer299 wrote...

Oh, no no no no. I am *not* getting into the whole "what makes a RPG a RPG" debate here. My point was just that RPG is more than just an empty name to be applied to any and everything game that exists and I disagree with that.

So let us stop using this label because it represents nothing but air. Instead we could all call things by their real names, like the story, conversations, interactions, inventory, powers, weapons, mods, explorations and so on - no more pointless RPG discussions.

Than you also need to drop every other useless label such as "shooter,
adventure, puzzle," etc, and just generically lump games together with
the premise only and banning the use of *all* labels. Not just RPG
because you don't find it has any value/use.

[celuloid]

[quote]AlanC9 wrote...

...doesn't mean what you think it does. The RPG genre is something of an accident -- when RPGs were first created you couldn't really do personality, branching decisions, and so forth, but you could do combat and statistical progression. Maybe such games shoudln't be called RPGs. But they were and are.

My point is that the reason that RPGs are called RPGs has nothing to do with how you would like to use the term. I like your definition better, but your definition hasn't won yet.
[/quote]
I am aware of the roots. But even Bioware seems to understand now that inventory does not cut it anymore. And they are the market leaders. But they faltered with ME2.

[quote]
[quote] RPG is a game that has role-playing in its story. ME1 had more of it than ME2.[/quote]How so?
[/quote][/quote]
Comparison of Noveria versus Horizon.

Modifié par celuloid, 26 juillet 2011 - 06:27 .

[Village_Idiot]

Slayer299 wrote...

Than you also need to drop every other useless label such as "shooter,
adventure, puzzle," etc, and just generically lump games together with
the premise only and banning the use of *all* labels. Not just RPG
because you don't find it has any value/use.

I believe you are missing the point here. The intention is to stop the incredibly easily sparked debate over "What makes an RPG", which has been flogged to death on this forum time and time over. The results at this stage are never pretty.

[Slayer299]

Agreed, that the 'what makes an RPG' discussions usually get ugly, but Shepard the Leopard's idea of just using the descriptions of "story, conversations, interactions, inventory, powers, weapons, mods, explorations and so on - no more pointless RPG discussions" is also too cumbersome to be used since labels are "empty".

[Eurhetemec]

celuloid wrote...

I am aware of the roots. But even Bioware seems to understand now that inventory does not cut it anymore. And they are the market leaders. But they faltered with ME2.

For me, when you say that, you basically totally invalidate your own opinion. ME2 wasn't just well-reviewed, it's one of the best games I've ever played, and I've been gaming since 1986. Specific criticisms can be made, sure - the inventory is one of them, but no game is perfect, and claiming they "faltered" just seems utterly irrational. ME1's inventory had more problems and more negative impact on the game than ME2's over-simplified one. To give a specific example - ME2's lack of much in the way of inventory made me feel, vaguely and slightly that I was missing something - not wonderful but not a disaster. ME1's inventory, on the other hand, made me waste literally hours of play selling items and turning items into omni-gel and sorting through items for tiny upgrades, and equipping characters I hardly ever play and so on. That was much worse.

DA2 - that's BioWare "faltering" - they produced a game not with tiny, arguable, subjective flaws like ME2, but a game with huge, obvious flaws that even someone who enjoyed the game a lot could not possibly overlook. The re-use of areas to an un-heard-of degree, the dead-ish city despite it being the center of the game, the questionable combat and exploding person lunacy (now fixed but still). So, like please, Celluloid, if ME2 is BioWare "faltering", then I hope they "falter" with every game, because it'll make them very rich, and give us tons of amazing RPGs.

[Ieldra]

I don't see action and story as mutually exclusive. In fact, a war story should have plenty of action as well as emotional moments.

I'm far more concerned with "style over substance" and overemphasis on coolness over plausibility. One example is that fight between a Thresher Maw and a Reaper. Seriously? A thresher maw, something that Shepard has taken out on foot repeatedly in ME1, and once in ME2, is somehow upgraded to being a serious threat to a Reaper, even a small one? Bah. I just can't believe it.

Another thing I never want to see again is the art style dissonance of things like Samara's outfit, which looks as if it came straight out of a superhero comic book. Such things have no place in an epic Sci-Fi setting, space opera or not.

[sbvera13]

ME2 Story:
Prologue: Big Red Reset Button. It's 2 years later.  Everything you know has changed.
Act 1: Discover hideous aliens, embark on quest to stop them. Duration: 10 minutes
Act 2: Build your squad, learn their secrets, befriend them, kill people for them. Duration: 29 hours.
Act 3: Confront hideous aliens, destroy them.  Duration: 30 minutes.

An epic story that is not.  It drags on with no central character(s), a weak and almost inconsequential overall plot, and zero development  between the reveal (Finding collectors) to the conclusion (killing the collectors).  Weak, and IMO as a hobbyist fan writer, lazy as well.

ME2 Story (The way it should have been)
Prologue: ME1
Act 1: Fresh from the defeat of Saren, you embark, with the full support of the galaxy and fleets at your command, on a mission to destroy the remaining Geth and learn more abotu the Reapers.  Once free from the threat of iminent death, the politicians of the galaxy quickly turn back to the status quo and you find that they are merely using your belief in the reapers to get you to do petty favors for them.  Betrayed and abandoned, you set out on your own and discover that the collectors are targeting humans and working with reapers.  Without support, the Normandy is destroyed. Duration: 10 hours
Act 2: Rebuilt and with your recent betrayal fresh in your mind, you gleefully jump into Cerberus' arms for the chance to take the fight to the Reapers.  You start searchin the galaxy, gathering clues about the collectors and building a team that can take them on. Duration: 20 hours
Act 3: Prepared, determined, and alone except for your squad, you embark on a suicidal attempt to destroy the most advanced alien species currently in the galaxy.  Challenges are met, sacrifices made, hard choices are pondered, but you eventually are victorious.  Not without cost however, as (insert player choice of squadmate/government/ship/cerberus/etc) had to be sacrificed for the mission to succeed.  Duration: 2-5 Hours

Now that's epic.  Playing through your own betrayal?  Seeing the idealistic world you fought for crumble around you and betray you to your death?  Willingly turning against your own beliefs to join a terrorist organization (and with enough buildap that you, the player, actually believe it)? Deep character moments there.

So yeah, ME2's story was pretty pathetic.  Doubly so because all the epic elements are already there, but they were not used.  I can only imagine that the writers were lazy or something.  I dunno.  Whether action over story was the cause I can't say, but I think trying to make it as easily accesible as possible (thus the Big Red Reset button at the very beggining) was a big issue, and action over story is definately one of the major marketing ploys.

Modifié par sbvera13, 26 juillet 2011 - 08:02 .

[celuloid]

Eurhetemec wrote...

celuloid wrote...

I am aware of the roots. But even Bioware seems to understand now that inventory does not cut it anymore. And they are the market leaders. But they faltered with ME2.

For me, when you say that, you basically totally invalidate your own opinion. ME2 wasn't just well-reviewed, it's one of the best games I've ever played, and I've been gaming since 1986. Specific criticisms can be made, sure - the inventory is one of them, but no game is perfect, and claiming they "faltered" just seems utterly irrational. ME1's inventory had more problems and more negative impact on the game than ME2's over-simplified one. To give a specific example - ME2's lack of much in the way of inventory made me feel, vaguely and slightly that I was missing something - not wonderful but not a disaster. ME1's inventory, on the other hand, made me waste literally hours of play selling items and turning items into omni-gel and sorting through items for tiny upgrades, and equipping characters I hardly ever play and so on. That was much worse.

DA2 - that's BioWare "faltering" - they produced a game not with tiny, arguable, subjective flaws like ME2, but a game with huge, obvious flaws that even someone who enjoyed the game a lot could not possibly overlook. The re-use of areas to an un-heard-of degree, the dead-ish city despite it being the center of the game, the questionable combat and exploding person lunacy (now fixed but still). So, like please, Celluloid, if ME2 is BioWare "faltering", then I hope they "falter" with every game, because it'll make them very rich, and give us tons of amazing RPGs.

I do not understand the rant about inventory. It was the worst part of ME1 and I just referenced it as a thing of the past that is irrelevant it today's RPGs.

I am not sure you get me.
"to falter - to be unsteady in purpose or action"
ME1 had better story, choices, roleplaying. The general consensus is that the ME2 approach to story and roleplaying was worse. They faltered in providing players with rich cohesive story. They could get ~100 Metacritic rating, not just 94.

[Buckwheat530]

@Ieldra: I think you underestimate the Thresher Maws. I applaud you if you took a Thresher Maw out on foot in ME1, but I always stuck to the Mako and it was generally a drawn out fight that I didn't always win(on Insanity, which I assume is the closest difficulty to reality). They are known for taking out whole groups(ie. Kirrahe's men and many of your former comrades, if you were a Sole Survivor). In ME2 they appear just as deadly. But for me, it seems to be hinted that the Thresher Maw is killed based off how the description of the Reaper vs. Thresher Maw.

@sbvera: While I wouldn't disagree that the prologue is a big red reset button and that a majority of the story revolves around building a team('s loyalty), a majority of the aspects that are in your version are in ME2, just not where you put them. Hell, if you role-play your Shepard a certain way, you basically described the plot of ME2(just with the Council/your former friends' lack of support coming part way through the game.

@the RPG debate: Keep in mind that most missions in ME2(main ones included) are about 45 minutes. ME1's main story worlds took up towards 3 hours. I agree that I would prefer a more engaging mission with a developed story that took multiple hours, but ME2's way of feeding you bits of it's story at a time wasn't necessarily bad.

[sbvera13]

Buckwheat530 wrote...

@sbvera: While I wouldn't disagree that the prologue is a big red reset button and that a majority of the story revolves around building a team('s loyalty), a majority of the aspects that are in your version are in ME2, just not where you put them. Hell, if you role-play your Shepard a certain way, you basically described the plot of ME2(just with the Council/your former friends' lack of support coming part way through the game.

That was basically the point.  It was there, but the order of presentation and quality of presentation stole it's impact.  Joining Cerberus felt artificial and forced because there was no buildup; the council's abandonment felt like a mishandling of the Idiot Ball because it had no real motivation behind it; the collectors felt like bullet sponges and not a real threat because they were revealed at no cost in the first 5 minutes and did not develop as the story moved on.  They took a potentialyl good story and nerfed it.  Take the same elements and move them around, shift the focus and time investment and you have epic.  It's all in there as I said, but they didn't use it.

[Phaedon]

celuloid wrote...

Moreover, ME2 story was
1. short

In comparison to?

[Eurhetemec]

celuloid wrote...

I am not sure you get me.
"to falter - to be unsteady in purpose or action"
ME1 had better story, choices, roleplaying. The general consensus is that the ME2 approach to story and roleplaying was worse. They faltered in providing players with rich cohesive story. They could get ~100 Metacritic rating, not just 94.

Hmmmmm. Fair points.

I think ME1 had better choices, yes, I will totally agree with that - whilst ME2 had more choices, very few of them seemed like they'd actually impact ME3 the universe in general, and there weren't any real "risk/risk" choices. So agreed there.

Better story? ME1 had a better storyLINE, but it worse storyTELLING for me. I thought the storytelling in ME2 was significantly better than ME1, like seriously so. They took a less interesting/involving story, and told it so much better that, emotionally, I felt it was a better story than ME1, even though my brain said otherwise. So I both agree and disagree there.

Better roleplay - no I totally disagree there. ME1 had very few "roleplaying" decisions - the best roleplaying decisions, imho, aren't the ones with huge, obvious consequences, because with those, you can't just make the RP decision, you have to make the "logical" decision too (imho), or even if you don't, it interferes.

Whereas with ME2, I had tons and tons of opportunity to make MINOR decisions which showed my character's individual personality off - on the Loyalty Missions particularly. The dialogue was also much better written, especially for Renegades. In ME1, I couldn't RP my Renegade properly, because some of the time, Renegade meant "xenophobe for no sensible reason", and half the time it meant "Jack Bauer in SPAAAACE" - I wanted it to mean the latter ALL the time. In ME2, it did mean the latter all the time - Paragon basically become "Honorable Just Compassionate Space Commander!" and Renegade was "SPACE ACTION MOVIE BADASS!" (even BW practically call it that lol). So for me, ME2 was really strongly ahead there.

I think people who played Paragon in both games might not have noticed the difference, but I definitely did.

So I have to give RP to ME2 - lots of minor decision, put much more consistent portrayal of Renegade = win.

Overall, I think ME2 edges out a tiny fraction ahead, for me - but yes if we just consider Story, Choices, and RP, ME1 & ME2 are much closer, and I can see ME1 coming out ahead, especially if you were a Paragon.

Modifié par Eurhetemec, 26 juillet 2011 - 09:02 .

[Spaghetti_Ninja]

I preferred the story in ME2 over the one in ME1. The characters in ME1 really had less backstory, less interesting conversations, and the overarching plot, while fairly interesting, got repetitive after a while.

ME2 and it's diversity of plot lines and personal arcs was great.

[Spaghetti_Ninja]

celuloid wrote...

The general consensus is that the ME2 approach to story and roleplaying was worse.

There is no such consensus, stop pulling things out of your ass.

Modifié par Spaghetti_Ninja, 26 juillet 2011 - 09:07 .

[Apollo Starflare]

Eh, ME2's story was more than in the same league of ME1's for me. The 'action' was always there, just handled better in ME2. I just
can't see where those that make out that it was a massively different
game in respects other than combat and exploration are coming from. So
far I haven't seen anything that suggests ME3 will make me feel any
different for that game, and I'm one of those who isn't happy with the
Cerberus thang as it stands. *shrugs* As for the action, again it just seems that they are attempting to perfect the ME2 formulae, it's hardly some drastic gutting of the Mass Effect recipe.

So... Yeah good post OP!

Phaedon wrote...

celuloid wrote...

Moreover, ME2 story was
1. short

In comparison to?

Indeed. I don't buy the negative comparisons to ME1 in particular, personally all my playthroughs have matched up pretty fairly between the two games and even focusing solely on the main plot they don't seem particularly dissimilar. I suppose an argument can be made that the 'main story' of ME2 only includes a small-ish number of companion missions, but that isn't the way I see it. Not to mention that even some of ME2's DLC felt as epic as some parts of ME1's main plot - but I suppose that shouldn't count or something?

I mean, we could all hope for some sort of DAO length game, but I'm not convinced that would be a good idea even if they had the time and resources. Just like some movies don't suit 3 hour runtimes, some games don't suit 70 hour runtimes. I would hestitate before saying this excuses the length of CoD games and such, but it's in the ballpark and those games are so much more about the multiplayer element anyway that it goes some way to balancing it out. Why people are surprised FPS games have become similar to sports titles I'll never know, for some of that genre it was a natural evolution.

Anything between 30 hours and 50 for a game like ME and I'm happy. But maybe that's just my play (and life)style. Not to mention that the ever reliable BioWare replayability, factor that in and these games are slowly sucking away any time I have to play other titles as it is.

[Praetor Knight]

Gorosaur wrote...

This is a complaint I honestly have never understood, and I continue to see it persist. Unlike in a movie where a director like Michael Bay can literally choose to devote more time having action scenes cover the run time,  a game like Mass Effect is broke up into segments of story and of action. In many ways they are completely seperate from one another.

*snip*

So please, when judging Mass Effect 3 keep this in mind. Enjoy the action for what it is, and hope that the story team pulls itside of the bargain to give us an overall great game.

So you are complaining about complaints?



Seriously though, I agree with you, but I firmly believe that the writing will knock my socks off anyway.

And I doubt the debates about the ME franchise will ever satisfy everyone.

[Gorosaur]

Essentially, yeah I am. I personally loved the gameplay in Mass Effect 2. If anything what I was trying to do with this topic is complaina bout the constant whining that is common among this fanbase.

[AlanC9]

celuloid wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

...doesn't mean what you think it does. The RPG genre is something of an accident -- when RPGs were first created you couldn't really do personality, branching decisions, and so forth, but you could do combat and statistical progression. Maybe such games shoudln't be called RPGs. But they were and are.

My point is that the reason that RPGs are called RPGs has nothing to do with how you would like to use the term. I like your definition better, but your definition hasn't won yet.

I am aware of the roots. But even Bioware seems to understand now that inventory does not cut it anymore. And they are the market leaders. But they faltered with ME2.

Faltered with ME2? I thought ME2 was the game where Bio showed that they understand "inventory does not cut it anymore." Edit: oh, I see, you mean other stuff.

As for Noveria vs Horizon, straight up comparisons are not workable when one game has more but shorter main missions.  Of course the longer mission generates more bullet points. If you want to make this case, you'll need a less tendentious presentation of the evidence.

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 juillet 2011 - 10:38 .

[AlanC9]

sbvera13 wrote...


That was basically the point.  It was there, but the order of presentation and quality of presentation stole it's impact.  Joining Cerberus felt artificial and forced because there was no buildup; the council's abandonment felt like a mishandling of the Idiot Ball because it had no real motivation behind it; the collectors felt like bullet sponges and not a real threat because they were revealed at no cost in the first 5 minutes and did not develop as the story moved on.  They took a potentialyl good story and nerfed it.  Take the same elements and move them around, shift the focus and time investment and you have epic.  It's all in there as I said, but they didn't use it.

Didn't share a lot of those feelings.

In addition, I'm not certain it's necessary or even particularly useful for a game plot to be tightly integrated the way you want. ME2 reminded me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer season. Some episodes are directly related to this year's Big Bad, some have a tangential connection, some are unrelated. I like this kind of structure just fine. YMMV.

[nutshell43]

ME2's story needed to sell me two basic premises:

1. Why it is necessary for Shepard to join a terrorist organization that may have killed his whole squad and scarred him mentally but definitely was behind some despicable crap in ME1.

2. Why it is necessary and worth it to build his dirty dozen.


It failed on both. On the second, you spent 20h building that team and doing loyalty missions that aren't connected to the main objective *story-wise* in any way shape or form but only through a tacked on gameplay-crutch. You then spend 5h going after the collectors, finding out that they only got one ship, a ship you easily destroy in space combat but conveniently there is a base you can land on because otherwise your team would have been completely useless.

On the first it doesn't even try.
TIM: "Shepard, the Collectors are evil and you have to join us."
Shepard: "k."
Even Star Wars' horrible bad switches to the dark side were done more convincingly. Imagine a Navy Seal is brought before Osama bin Laden (when he was still around) and Osama tells him he's got to join al Quaeda to fight against the Iranian nuke program. And he does. Does this in any way, shape or form sound plausible?

Give me a few hours of being frustrated by the Council and the Alliance. Seeing people die because the politicians and the generals don't give a fsck. Give me a few missions were I and my small squad desperately, deserted by my superiors, try to stop the Collectors and getting help from Cerberus of all people.
And when the Alliance takes away the Normandy, because I had the gall to save tens of thousands of colonists despite their best efforts to hinder my, TIM offers me the SR-2 and a free hand. Now we're talking.